SATURDAY JULY 13

Stifling hot day in Lyon, where the finish is just over the corner flag at the Stade de Gerland. The last time I was here, I was covering a World Cup tie between Iran and the USA in 1998, the nations' first meeting in major sporting competition since the hostage crisis 19 years earlier, when dozens of staff at the US embassy in Tehran were held captive by revolutionary students who stormed the building. After one failed rescue attempt, they were released 444 days later.

What has this got to do with the Tour de France? Not a lot - it's a quiet day on the roads, with Mark Cavendish's room-mate Matteo Trentin enjoying a surprise stage win. But tomorrow promises to be somewhat higher-profile...

SUNDAY JULY 14

Bastille Day in France, and a million fans crammed on to the slopes of Mount Ventoux witness arguably the greatest single performance on a bike by a British rider in Le Tour's history.

Chris Froome's lung-bursting breakaway on the 'Beast of Provence' is a poignant tribute to the memory of Tommy Simpson, the tragic son of a County Durham miner who died a mile from the summit of Ventoux in 1967. At the spot where Simpson collapsed on the bleak lunar landscape, there is a granite memorial - and today it is festooned with bottles left by amateur cyclists who have made the pilgrimage to the iconic stage on a national holiday for the hosts.

Froome leaves arch-rival Alberto Contaador halfway down the mountain with one memorable 'kick', and finally sees off the persistent Nairo Quintana with another burst in front of Simpson's shrine.

The Press workroom is 30km away, but four of us drive up the mountain to enjoy the scenery, and unique flavour, of Ventoux for ourselves before hurtling back down the other side to follow the race on TV. We are shooed off the course by an irate gendarme on a motorbike because of the approaching caravane - the crowd-pleasing procession of floats where the sponsors hurl free sweets and goodies into the crowd. Hold up the race, or the caravane, with a head-on collision by straying off-piste and you can get your accreditation revoked. Or, on Bastille Day, guillotined.

MONDAY JULY 15

(Photo: Mirror)

Rest day in the Vaucluse, and the man in the Yellow Jersey finally snaps in the swirl of uncorroborated doping smears, whispers and nudge-nudge insinuations. Froome, until now a model of restraint and decorum, hisses angrily that it's "not cool" to be accused of cheating or lying without any burden of proof being applied. He's right, of course. It seems you are guilty until proven innocent in cycling these days.

How ironic that Froome slips the leash, if only for a few moments, 24 hours after athletics is rocked by a series of failed drug tests, including Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell. Don't let cyclists near the back page while those squeaky-clean track sprinters are purveying truth and largesse, eh? At least cycling is making an effort to clean up its act - but 25 years since Ben Johnson was stripped of Olympic gold, it seems athletics is still in the dark ages.

Dinner tonight is with an old chum from 20 years ago in Avignon, a stone's throw from the famous bridge. All together now: Sur le pont d'Avignon, l'on y danse, l'on y danse...

TUESDAY JULY 16

Dangerous driving is an occupational hazard for Le Tour's rolling maul of 4,500 riders, backroom staff, media and sponsors, but today the charge is levelled squarely by the Tour de France leader at his closest rival. Froome accuses Alberto Contador of being reckless, taking uncalculated risks and too "desperate" to claw back his four-minute deficit on the leader. Contador, cutting one corner too many, comes off 7km from the finish in Gap, forcing Froome into the light rough as he takes evasive action.

Tonight, I am staying nearly 50 miles away in a remote chalet where the in-house literature boasts their hotel is "closest to the stars" - and they are not wrong. After dodging a 10-mile traffic jam with an intuitive, follow-your-nose diversion through unfamiliar foothills and narrow rat runs (my hire car does not have a satnav), I finally make it to Vars at nightfall, but there is no sign of the road to my overnight pit-stop.

The owners send a search party into the village to guide me to my destination - up more than two miles of terrain better suited to pony trekking and Alpine shepherds than a little Renault. I fear for the undercarriage, tyres and the axles. Somehow, no vital parts seem to fall off. Nice hotel, shame about the access.

WEDNESDAY JULY 17

After three weeks of almost unbroken sunshine, and prohibitively hot weather for cycling, a strange precipitation falls from the sky - but the heavens open too late to prevent Froome claiming his third stage win of the race in a mountainous 32km time trial.

Poor old Contador, who thought he was going to nip a few seconds off the Froomedog's lead, can only shake his head ruefully as our man in yellow undercuts him by another nine seconds after changing from a road race bike to an 'aero' machine halfway round. Up in the clouds, the weather gods voice their disapproval, too: Froome's latest tour de force is greeted by thunder and lightning.

THURSDAY JULY 18

You haven't lived, or enjoyed the full Tour de France experience, until you have joined a high-speed evacuation down a mountain after a summit finish. And after today's double helping of the Alpe d'Huez, it's my turn to sample the delights of a motorised peloton under police escort.

If I hadn't jumped out of the queue of campervans and vehicles whose break lights formed a neon ribbon all the way down the 21 hairpin bends, I would probably still be there now. But when the blue flashing lights of gendarme outriders, and hazard lights of authorised Tour officials, sponsors and media appeared in my wing mirror, there was no way I wasn't going to join them (before you ask, I was entitled to do so as holder of an official media windscreen visor).

This convoy snakes all the way down the mountain on the wrong side of the road, horns blaring, occasionally grinding to a halt while the police clear the next stretch of debris, drunks and badly-parked campervans.

At first, an angry policeman on a motorbike taps on my side window and gesticulates ominously that I should get back in line with the great unwashed - which would condemn me to a certain six-hour crawl among the 1.2 million fans struggling to get off the mountain.

Then he spots my sticker and barks the magic word, 'Avancez!', and I hang doggedly to the coat-tails of the Agence France Presse car in front of me in the privileged lane until we hit the main road 20km in the valley below. From joining the evacuation, it takes about an hour to escape the madness, but my long day is still not over yet.

My hotel for the night is 1,750m back up another blasted mountain - they get everywhere in the Alps, these big monoliths - in a tiny resort called Chamrousse, and for the second time in three nights I find myself trying to locate a small hotel in the dark with all the scientific application of pinning the tail on the donkey.

Had the storms forecast for that evening materialised, the climb up a desperately narrow (but asphalt) mountain lane would have been a real white-knuckle ride. In the event, I hit the target before midnight, when the poor saps stuck on Alpe d'Huez have probably got another five hours left in the queue.

FRIDAY JULY 19

Tip of the hat, or 'chapeau' as they say in France, to Le Grand-Bornand. Not only is it arguably the prettiest setting for a stage finish in the 100th Tour, but the spread they laid on for visiting professors of the pun was civic pride at its finest. The fillets of sea bass cooked on a sizzling skillet were worth the journey alone.

To tell the truth, the five-star buffet was welcome rocket fuel to those of us running low on gas after three weeks and 3,000 miles on the clock since we turned 50. The final weekend is ushered in by another storm on the retreat to my Alan Partridge travel tavern on the outskirts of an unexceptional town near Annecy.

SATURDAY JULY 20

Access to the finish at Le Semnoz, the summit finish above Annecy where Chris Froome all but clinches the Yellow Jersey, from the Press marquee is via a chairlift. As the preferred mode of transport uphill for the ski set glides over the high Alpine pasture on a glorious morning, the soundtrack of cowbells tinkling below is blissful.

By the winning post, a bovine delegation - four cows, dressed in yellow, green, white and polka dot jerseys - is afforded a VIP enclosure to greet Froome as he effectively seals victory in the Tour de France, finishing third behind Nairo Quintana and Joaquim Rodriguez in a late breakaway. After a marathon 42-minute press conference on Le Semnoz, Va Va Froome gives a late-night briefing to the English newspaper corps who have followed his progress all the way since Corsica back at Team Sky's hotel in Annecy.

It is approaching 11.30pm as I set off on the long haul towards Paris, broken by an overnight stop 100 miles away in Lyon - where my unscheduled late-night tour of the Peripherique (ring road) aptly rounds off a week of nocturnal sightseeing, but I am luckier than two colleagues on a stopover in Chalon-sur-Saone. They check in at 2am to find their hotel has sold their rooms and kip on makeshift couches in the lobby.

SUNDAY JULY 21

Today is journey's end, the day Chris Froome follows Bradley Wiggins into Tour de France legend as the second British winner of cycling's most famous race in as many years. With the traditional finish on the Champs Elysees deferred until sunset, to accommodate a glitzy light show at the presentation ceremony, I catch a TGV to Paris and catch up with last night's horror story from the sleep deprivation corps at the Press centre, a hotel near the Arc de Triomphe.

(Photo: Getty)

Froome gives a classy winner's speech from the podium, dedicating his triumph to his late mother, Jane, who had succumbed to cancer five years earlier, and enjoying the last word on the doping smears which he had been forced to deflect ad nauseam as the unfortunate sap who won the first Tour since Lance Armstrong's confession to chat show queen Oprah Winfrey. "This Yellow Jersey will stand the test of time," says Va Va Froome. Good punchline.

And for those of us who had been living out of a suitcase, drying our washed socks in the boot, charging up mountains and down valleys, eating at ridiculous times of night, doing passable impersonations of Alan Whicker, Alan Partridge and Alain Prost - sometimes all at once - it only remains to be turfed off our pavement debriefing outside a brasserie at nightshift o'clock.

Au revoir, Tour de France, it's been a blast. See you in Yorkshire in 2014. If it's anywhere near as memorable as the last three-and-a-half weeks, it will be reet grande.